When I first walked into the Arsenal dressing room, I was absolutely...well, I was cacking myself, basically.”

Theo Walcott smiles as he remembers what it’s like to be 16 years old and thrust into a world in which Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and Robert Pires are no longer the players you watch wide-eyed from afar – but your teammates. “I looked around and saw guys like Jens [Lehmann], Thierry, Ljungberg, Pires, Bergkamp, Sol Campbell and Ashley Cole – all people who have won things,” he remembers. “That whole era is a bit different to the one now.”

It’s a refreshingly candid appraisal of how things have changed at the club a self-confessed “tiny, baby-faced” Walcott joined from Southampton in January 2006. He, too, is very different from the excitable, eager-to-please teenager determined his future lay at Arsenal, despite reported interest from Chelsea, Manchester United and Tottenham. The 24-year-old Walcott is one who speaks with the belief of a man who has been knocked down numerous times during his Arsenal career – and always bounced back.

On the day Sport meets him in the pleasant surrounds of the Grove Hotel in Hertfordshire – a 20-minute drive from the home he shares with his fiancée Melanie Slade – Walcott has spent a tough morning with the Arsenal fitness coach, preparing his body to bounce back once more, this time from injury. “It was probably a wake-up call – maybe I was getting slightly tired,” he says of the groin strain that put him out of action for slightly more than three weeks before returning in the 3-1 win over Norwich a fortnight ago.

THE DOTTED LINE
As Walcott speaks, he relentlessly stirs sugar into a frothy cappuccino. “Sorry,” he says, suddenly aware of the racket he’s making with the tiny teaspoon. “I stir my sugar a lot.” It’s the fourth apology Sport has had from the Arsenal man in the 10 minutes that have passed since his arrival, following those he’s already issued for being 15 minutes late, for wanting 10 minutes with his barber before our photoshoot, and for only bringing one choice of jumper.

One thing he’s not apologising for, however, is his form on the pitch so far this season. “Personally, I’m very happy with everything I’ve contributed,” he says. “It was difficult at the start, having to deal with all the contract stuff that was going on, and I was obviously on the bench for about 10 games in a row. But once I was given the chance, I knew I just had to make sure I played well. “I think I have 14 assists and 18 goals so far, which is the best season I’ve had – and that’s with not starting so many games. I think I played 50-odd [it was 57] games last year, and I’m not even close to that this season [with 42 so far], so overall I’m fairly pleased with that side of things.”

It was towards the end of last season when Walcott seemed to be at his very best – a patch of form that served only to heighten the lengthy will he/won’t he speculation over his contract at Arsenal. Although he insists: “The contract side of it was never really on my mind until about two or three weeks before it was actually resolved.” That didn’t stop Walcott being quizzed about the contract in every post-match interview he gave in the weeks leading up to January 18 2013, or ‘signing day’. And in every one, he gave the same calm, considered response that essentially amounted to: it’s not done yet. I want to stay. It’s a complicated process.

“It did get frustrating,” he admits now. “Because I didn’t want it to be about just me and the contract all the time – it’s about the team. If I’d scored, I would get asked about the contract instead of reflecting on the actual game.”

FILLING THE VOID
While some players get itchy feet if they’re at the same club for longer than a couple of years, Walcott is someone who clearly prefers stability in his professional life – and his home life, too. The Arsenal forward has been with fiancée Melanie since he was 15 years old, with the pair set to marry this summer. “I’m lucky to have Mel,” he says when recalling how the contract saga played heavily upon his mind earlier this season. “Because I could just go home and discuss everything with her if I needed to. She was great through it all. She keeps me relaxed by helping me to forget about the football at times, so I can just be at home with her and the dogs and switch off – that was what I wanted. “Don’t get me wrong – she knows her stuff on football, too. She’s a trained sports physio, so that side of it is great for me. And she has her own dream team, so she knows what she’s doing. Is she beating me? Nah – she’s probably about mid-table. She did have me in her team, but when I got injured she took me out. I hope she’s put me back in now…”

With his immediate future at Arsenal now secure, Walcott has been able to fully focus on the team – and that growing space in the club’s trophy cabinet. While plenty has changed at the club since his arrival in 2006 (including the departures of messrs Henry, Bergkamp, Cole et al), that abyss has not.

Indeed, it speaks volumes that our abiding memory from Sport’s previous interview with Walcott in August 2008 is the emphasis he placed on the players’ determination to turn Arsenal into a winning club once again. So, are they getting any closer? “I think this year we probably had the chance to win something,” he sighs. “We had Blackburn at home in the FA Cup and that’s...that wouldn’t normally happen. I think nine times out of 10 we’d win that, but Blackburn just wanted it more and you’ve got to give credit to them. “But, for me, we need to be having a bit more of a go at the league, definitely. We want to compete, and we can do it. You saw when everyone was against us we had a great result like the one at Bayern – winning 2-0 away from home, and then doing the same at Swansea. So we can do it; it’s in us. We just haven’t been at that consistent level to do it at times. We did need a little kick up the backside to get us back on track. But, lately, I think we’ve worked harder as a unit. We’ve kept more clean sheets, everyone is in their positions and there’s more communication. I think you can see that the players want it a bit more because they want to prove people wrong. We want to show that we’re still a top-four team. Next year, though, we want to be right up there.”

The desire is there, as strong as it always has been. But, as Walcott’s early memories of the Arsenal dressing room suggest, the players come and go. The departure of a certain Dutchman last summer was something that was widely predicted to have a devastating impact on the club, and Walcott is honest in his assessment that “when you lose someone like Robin [van Persie] – one of your best players – it’s obviously difficult to replace the amount of goals he scored and what he did for the team. “But we’ve coped with it quite well. Everyone is sharing the goal load, and we haven’t relied on one player all the time. We’re in a similar situation to last year, really, when we finished third, only a point ahead of Tottenham [on 69 points] and with Newcastle and Chelsea not far behind [on 65 and 64, respectively]. It has been an up-and-down season, though. We’ve lost a few games at home that you wouldn’t have thought we would, but it’s still in our own hands. And we do tend to end the season quite well. We’re not looking at fourth, we’re looking at third – that’s definitely a realistic aim.

BELIEVING IN THE BOSS
Walcott’s spell on the sidelines at the start of this month meant he was left suffering with Arsenal’s supporters when the team threatened to let things slip on the pitch. “Ah, the West Brom game was horrible,” he cringes. “I was listening to it on the radio and now I know just how Mel feels when she’s watching it at home, because I was biting my nails with nerves. When we went down to 10 men and then they got a goal back, I thought: ‘This is going to be horrible for the last 20 minutes.’”

Having been guided by manager Arsène Wenger for more than seven years, Walcott knows only too well what the Frenchman’s reaction would have been had their 2-0 lead at the Hawthorns been squandered. This has been the Arsenal manager’s most difficult campaign so far – one that has looked at times as though it might be reaching a gloomy conclusion. But Walcott insists the players should not hide behind the boss when it comes to the team’s failings: “He always puts it back on himself and protects the team, but us players know that we’re the ones who go out there and play – we do the job. “He obviously puts his message and tactics across at training, but if we don’t do the job on a weekend, it can’t be down to the manager. We need to step up ourselves and not always let the manager take the blame.” Not that Wenger lets his players off the hook entirely when they underperform.

“He definitely lets us know the following day, that’s for sure,” nods Walcott seriously. “There’s been a couple of those this year. People think he doesn’t let loose, but he can – just in quite a calm way. We all understand how much it means to him, as well as to us, and how much belief he has in us. That should be enough to spur us on to do it for him.” Indeed, it was Wenger’s belief in the talents of a 16-year-old Walcott that led to his first signature on an Arsenal contract. So how does the England international compare the player he is now to the young winger who ‘cacked himself’ walking into the Arsenal dressing room? “I’d say I definitely take a bit more responsibility now – for encouraging the younger players and, if nothing’s happening in a game, for trying to make something happen out of nowhere.

“The technical side of my game’s changed, too. The last three years have been my best in terms of goals, so I know I can score – I just want to do it more. I enjoy playing up top.”

While Walcott’s journey has not been without its bumps and scenic diversions, it is one from which young arrivals at the club can take heart. “They can relate to me a bit easier because I’m younger,” he explains. “So I just tell them to believe in themselves. They also need to have a good attitude and want to work hard to improve. “But, like my dad always told me, you have to enjoy it. You don’t want to have too much pressure on you at that age – and, if you’re playing for Arsenal as a teenager, you’re definitely a very good player. Although when Sol Campbell cleaned me out in my very first training session, I definitely had a moment thinking: ‘What have I got myself into here?’” Walcott now knows exactly what he got himself into. But he also knows that if he is to emulate the players he remembers from his first day at Arsenal – the winners – he has to keep on bouncing back from those knocks.